NAME

git-pull - Fetch from and integrate with another repository or a local branch

SYNOPSIS

git pull [options] [<repository> [<refspec>…​]]

DESCRIPTION

Incorporates changes from a remote repository into the current
branch. In its default mode, git pull is shorthand for
git fetch followed by git merge FETCH_HEAD.

More precisely, git pull runs git fetch with the given
parameters and calls git merge to merge the retrieved branch
heads into the current branch.
With --rebase, it runs git rebase instead of git merge.

<repository> should be the name of a remote repository as
passed to git-fetch[1]. <refspec> can name an
arbitrary remote ref (for example, the name of a tag) or even
a collection of refs with corresponding remote-tracking branches
(e.g., refs/heads/*:refs/remotes/origin/*),
but usually it is the name of a branch in the remote repository.

Default values for <repository> and <branch> are read from the
"remote" and "merge" configuration for the current branch
as set by git-branch[1]--track.

Assume the following history exists and the current branch is
"master":

Then "git pull" will fetch and replay the changes from the remote
master branch since it diverged from the local master (i.e., E)
until its current commit (C) on top of master and record the
result in a new commit along with the names of the two parent commits
and a log message from the user describing the changes.

A---B---C origin/master
/ \
D---E---F---G---H master

See git-merge[1] for details, including how conflicts
are presented and handled.

In Git 1.7.0 or later, to cancel a conflicting merge, use
git reset --merge. Warning: In older versions of Git, running git pull
with uncommitted changes is discouraged: while possible, it leaves you
in a state that may be hard to back out of in the case of a conflict.

If any of the remote changes overlap with local uncommitted changes,
the merge will be automatically canceled and the work tree untouched.
It is generally best to get any local changes in working order before
pulling or stash them away with git-stash[1].

OPTIONS

-q

--quiet

This is passed to both underlying git-fetch to squelch reporting of
during transfer, and underlying git-merge to squelch output during
merging.

-v

--verbose

Pass --verbose to git-fetch and git-merge.

--[no-]recurse-submodules[=yes|on-demand|no]

This option controls if new commits of all populated submodules should
be fetched and updated, too (see git-config[1] and
gitmodules[5]).

If the checkout is done via rebase, local submodule commits are rebased as well.

If the update is done via merge, the submodule conflicts are resolved and checked out.

Options related to merging

--commit

--no-commit

Perform the merge and commit the result. This option can
be used to override --no-commit.

With --no-commit perform the merge but pretend the merge
failed and do not autocommit, to give the user a chance to
inspect and further tweak the merge result before committing.

--edit

-e

--no-edit

Invoke an editor before committing successful mechanical merge to
further edit the auto-generated merge message, so that the user
can explain and justify the merge. The --no-edit option can be
used to accept the auto-generated message (this is generally
discouraged).

Older scripts may depend on the historical behaviour of not allowing the
user to edit the merge log message. They will see an editor opened when
they run git merge. To make it easier to adjust such scripts to the
updated behaviour, the environment variable GIT_MERGE_AUTOEDIT can be
set to no at the beginning of them.

--ff

When the merge resolves as a fast-forward, only update the branch
pointer, without creating a merge commit. This is the default
behavior.

--no-ff

Create a merge commit even when the merge resolves as a
fast-forward. This is the default behaviour when merging an
annotated (and possibly signed) tag.

--ff-only

Refuse to merge and exit with a non-zero status unless the
current HEAD is already up-to-date or the merge can be
resolved as a fast-forward.

--log[=<n>]

--no-log

In addition to branch names, populate the log message with
one-line descriptions from at most <n> actual commits that are being
merged. See also git-fmt-merge-msg[1].

With --no-log do not list one-line descriptions from the
actual commits being merged.

--stat

-n

--no-stat

Show a diffstat at the end of the merge. The diffstat is also
controlled by the configuration option merge.stat.

With -n or --no-stat do not show a diffstat at the end of the
merge.

--squash

--no-squash

Produce the working tree and index state as if a real merge
happened (except for the merge information), but do not actually
make a commit, move the HEAD, or record $GIT_DIR/MERGE_HEAD
(to cause the next git commit command to create a merge
commit). This allows you to create a single commit on top of
the current branch whose effect is the same as merging another
branch (or more in case of an octopus).

With --no-squash perform the merge and commit the result. This
option can be used to override --squash.

-s <strategy>

--strategy=<strategy>

Use the given merge strategy; can be supplied more than
once to specify them in the order they should be tried.
If there is no -s option, a built-in list of strategies
is used instead (git merge-recursive when merging a single
head, git merge-octopus otherwise).

-X <option>

--strategy-option=<option>

Pass merge strategy specific option through to the merge
strategy.

--verify-signatures

--no-verify-signatures

Verify that the tip commit of the side branch being merged is
signed with a valid key, i.e. a key that has a valid uid: in the
default trust model, this means the signing key has been signed by
a trusted key. If the tip commit of the side branch is not signed
with a valid key, the merge is aborted.

--summary

--no-summary

Synonyms to --stat and --no-stat; these are deprecated and will be
removed in the future.

--allow-unrelated-histories

By default, git merge command refuses to merge histories
that do not share a common ancestor. This option can be
used to override this safety when merging histories of two
projects that started their lives independently. As that is
a very rare occasion, no configuration variable to enable
this by default exists and will not be added.

-r

--rebase[=false|true|preserve|interactive]

When true, rebase the current branch on top of the upstream
branch after fetching. If there is a remote-tracking branch
corresponding to the upstream branch and the upstream branch
was rebased since last fetched, the rebase uses that information
to avoid rebasing non-local changes.

When set to preserve, rebase with the --preserve-merges option passed
to git rebase so that locally created merge commits will not be flattened.

When false, merge the current branch into the upstream branch.

When interactive, enable the interactive mode of rebase.

See pull.rebase, branch.<name>.rebase and branch.autoSetupRebase in
git-config[1] if you want to make git pull always use
--rebase instead of merging.

Note

This is a potentially dangerous mode of operation.
It rewrites history, which does not bode well when you
published that history already. Do not use this option
unless you have read git-rebase[1] carefully.

--no-rebase

Override earlier --rebase.

--autostash

--no-autostash

Before starting rebase, stash local modifications away (see
git-stash[1]) if needed, and apply the stash entry when
done. --no-autostash is useful to override the rebase.autoStash
configuration variable (see git-config[1]).

This option is only valid when "--rebase" is used.

Options related to fetching

--all

Fetch all remotes.

-a

--append

Append ref names and object names of fetched refs to the
existing contents of .git/FETCH_HEAD. Without this
option old data in .git/FETCH_HEAD will be overwritten.

--depth=<depth>

Limit fetching to the specified number of commits from the tip of
each remote branch history. If fetching to a shallow repository
created by git clone with --depth=<depth> option (see
git-clone[1]), deepen or shorten the history to the specified
number of commits. Tags for the deepened commits are not fetched.

--deepen=<depth>

Similar to --depth, except it specifies the number of commits
from the current shallow boundary instead of from the tip of
each remote branch history.

--shallow-since=<date>

Deepen or shorten the history of a shallow repository to
include all reachable commits after <date>.

--shallow-exclude=<revision>

Deepen or shorten the history of a shallow repository to
exclude commits reachable from a specified remote branch or tag.
This option can be specified multiple times.

--unshallow

If the source repository is complete, convert a shallow
repository to a complete one, removing all the limitations
imposed by shallow repositories.

If the source repository is shallow, fetch as much as possible so that
the current repository has the same history as the source repository.

--update-shallow

By default when fetching from a shallow repository,
git fetch refuses refs that require updating
.git/shallow. This option updates .git/shallow and accept such
refs.

-f

--force

When git fetch is used with <rbranch>:<lbranch>
refspec, it refuses to update the local branch
<lbranch> unless the remote branch <rbranch> it
fetches is a descendant of <lbranch>. This option
overrides that check.

-k

--keep

Keep downloaded pack.

--no-tags

By default, tags that point at objects that are downloaded
from the remote repository are fetched and stored locally.
This option disables this automatic tag following. The default
behavior for a remote may be specified with the remote.<name>.tagOpt
setting. See git-config[1].

-u

--update-head-ok

By default git fetch refuses to update the head which
corresponds to the current branch. This flag disables the
check. This is purely for the internal use for git pull
to communicate with git fetch, and unless you are
implementing your own Porcelain you are not supposed to
use it.

--upload-pack <upload-pack>

When given, and the repository to fetch from is handled
by git fetch-pack, --exec=<upload-pack> is passed to
the command to specify non-default path for the command
run on the other end.

--progress

Progress status is reported on the standard error stream
by default when it is attached to a terminal, unless -q
is specified. This flag forces progress status even if the
standard error stream is not directed to a terminal.

-4

--ipv4

Use IPv4 addresses only, ignoring IPv6 addresses.

-6

--ipv6

Use IPv6 addresses only, ignoring IPv4 addresses.

<repository>

The "remote" repository that is the source of a fetch
or pull operation. This parameter can be either a URL
(see the section GIT URLS below) or the name
of a remote (see the section REMOTES below).

<refspec>

Specifies which refs to fetch and which local refs to update.
When no <refspec>s appear on the command line, the refs to fetch
are read from remote.<repository>.fetch variables instead
(see git-fetch[1]).

The format of a <refspec> parameter is an optional plus
+, followed by the source ref <src>, followed
by a colon :, followed by the destination ref <dst>.
The colon can be omitted when <dst> is empty.

tag <tag> means the same as refs/tags/<tag>:refs/tags/<tag>;
it requests fetching everything up to the given tag.

The remote ref that matches <src>
is fetched, and if <dst> is not empty string, the local
ref that matches it is fast-forwarded using <src>.
If the optional plus + is used, the local ref
is updated even if it does not result in a fast-forward
update.

Note

When the remote branch you want to fetch is known to
be rewound and rebased regularly, it is expected that
its new tip will not be descendant of its previous tip
(as stored in your remote-tracking branch the last time
you fetched). You would want
to use the + sign to indicate non-fast-forward updates
will be needed for such branches. There is no way to
determine or declare that a branch will be made available
in a repository with this behavior; the pulling user simply
must know this is the expected usage pattern for a branch.

Note

There is a difference between listing multiple <refspec>
directly on git pull command line and having multiple
remote.<repository>.fetch entries in your configuration
for a <repository> and running a
git pull command without any explicit <refspec> parameters.
<refspec>s listed explicitly on the command line are always
merged into the current branch after fetching. In other words,
if you list more than one remote ref, git pull will create
an Octopus merge. On the other hand, if you do not list any
explicit <refspec> parameter on the command line, git pull
will fetch all the <refspec>s it finds in the
remote.<repository>.fetch configuration and merge
only the first <refspec> found into the current branch.
This is because making an
Octopus from remote refs is rarely done, while keeping track
of multiple remote heads in one-go by fetching more than one
is often useful.

GIT URLS

In general, URLs contain information about the transport protocol, the
address of the remote server, and the path to the repository.
Depending on the transport protocol, some of this information may be
absent.

Git supports ssh, git, http, and https protocols (in addition, ftp,
and ftps can be used for fetching and rsync can be used for fetching
and pushing, but these are inefficient and deprecated; do not use
them).

The native transport (i.e. git:// URL) does no authentication and
should be used with caution on unsecured networks.

The following syntaxes may be used with them:

ssh://[user@]host.xz[:port]/path/to/repo.git/

git://host.xz[:port]/path/to/repo.git/

http[s]://host.xz[:port]/path/to/repo.git/

ftp[s]://host.xz[:port]/path/to/repo.git/

rsync://host.xz/path/to/repo.git/

An alternative scp-like syntax may also be used with the ssh protocol:

[user@]host.xz:path/to/repo.git/

This syntax is only recognized if there are no slashes before the
first colon. This helps differentiate a local path that contains a
colon. For example the local path foo:bar could be specified as an
absolute path or ./foo:bar to avoid being misinterpreted as an ssh
url.

The ssh and git protocols additionally support ~username expansion:

ssh://[user@]host.xz[:port]/~[user]/path/to/repo.git/

git://host.xz[:port]/~[user]/path/to/repo.git/

[user@]host.xz:/~[user]/path/to/repo.git/

For local repositories, also supported by Git natively, the following
syntaxes may be used:

/path/to/repo.git/

file:///path/to/repo.git/

These two syntaxes are mostly equivalent, except when cloning, when
the former implies --local option. See git-clone[1] for
details.

When Git doesn’t know how to handle a certain transport protocol, it
attempts to use the remote-<transport> remote helper, if one
exists. To explicitly request a remote helper, the following syntax
may be used:

<transport>::<address>

where <address> may be a path, a server and path, or an arbitrary
URL-like string recognized by the specific remote helper being
invoked. See gitremote-helpers[1] for details.

If there are a large number of similarly-named remote repositories and
you want to use a different format for them (such that the URLs you
use will be rewritten into URLs that work), you can create a
configuration section of the form:

a URL like "work:repo.git" or like "host.xz:/path/to/repo.git" will be
rewritten in any context that takes a URL to be "git://git.host.xz/repo.git".

If you want to rewrite URLs for push only, you can create a
configuration section of the form:

[url "<actual url base>"]
pushInsteadOf = <other url base>

For example, with this:

[url "ssh://example.org/"]
pushInsteadOf = git://example.org/

a URL like "git://example.org/path/to/repo.git" will be rewritten to
"ssh://example.org/path/to/repo.git" for pushes, but pulls will still
use the original URL.

REMOTES

The name of one of the following can be used instead
of a URL as <repository> argument:

a remote in the Git configuration file: $GIT_DIR/config,

a file in the $GIT_DIR/remotes directory, or

a file in the $GIT_DIR/branches directory.

All of these also allow you to omit the refspec from the command line
because they each contain a refspec which git will use by default.

Named remote in configuration file

You can choose to provide the name of a remote which you had previously
configured using git-remote[1], git-config[1]
or even by a manual edit to the $GIT_DIR/config file. The URL of
this remote will be used to access the repository. The refspec
of this remote will be used by default when you do
not provide a refspec on the command line. The entry in the
config file would appear like this:

The <pushurl> is used for pushes only. It is optional and defaults
to <url>.

Named file in $GIT_DIR/remotes

You can choose to provide the name of a
file in $GIT_DIR/remotes. The URL
in this file will be used to access the repository. The refspec
in this file will be used as default when you do not
provide a refspec on the command line. This file should have the
following format:

URL: one of the above URL format
Push: <refspec>
Pull: <refspec>

Push: lines are used by git push and
Pull: lines are used by git pull and git fetch.
Multiple Push: and Pull: lines may
be specified for additional branch mappings.

Named file in $GIT_DIR/branches

You can choose to provide the name of a
file in $GIT_DIR/branches.
The URL in this file will be used to access the repository.
This file should have the following format:

<url>#<head>

<url> is required; #<head> is optional.

Depending on the operation, git will use one of the following
refspecs, if you don’t provide one on the command line.
<branch> is the name of this file in $GIT_DIR/branches and
<head> defaults to master.

git fetch uses:

refs/heads/<head>:refs/heads/<branch>

git push uses:

HEAD:refs/heads/<head>

MERGE STRATEGIES

The merge mechanism (git merge and git pull commands) allows the
backend merge strategies to be chosen with -s option. Some strategies
can also take their own options, which can be passed by giving -X<option>
arguments to git merge and/or git pull.

resolve

This can only resolve two heads (i.e. the current branch
and another branch you pulled from) using a 3-way merge
algorithm. It tries to carefully detect criss-cross
merge ambiguities and is considered generally safe and
fast.

recursive

This can only resolve two heads using a 3-way merge
algorithm. When there is more than one common
ancestor that can be used for 3-way merge, it creates a
merged tree of the common ancestors and uses that as
the reference tree for the 3-way merge. This has been
reported to result in fewer merge conflicts without
causing mismerges by tests done on actual merge commits
taken from Linux 2.6 kernel development history.
Additionally this can detect and handle merges involving
renames. This is the default merge strategy when
pulling or merging one branch.

The recursive strategy can take the following options:

ours

This option forces conflicting hunks to be auto-resolved cleanly by
favoring our version. Changes from the other tree that do not
conflict with our side are reflected to the merge result.
For a binary file, the entire contents are taken from our side.

This should not be confused with the ours merge strategy, which does not
even look at what the other tree contains at all. It discards everything
the other tree did, declaring our history contains all that happened in it.

theirs

This is the opposite of ours.

patience

With this option, merge-recursive spends a little extra time
to avoid mismerges that sometimes occur due to unimportant
matching lines (e.g., braces from distinct functions). Use
this when the branches to be merged have diverged wildly.
See also git-diff[1]--patience.

diff-algorithm=[patience|minimal|histogram|myers]

Tells merge-recursive to use a different diff algorithm, which
can help avoid mismerges that occur due to unimportant matching
lines (such as braces from distinct functions). See also
git-diff[1]--diff-algorithm.

ignore-space-change

ignore-all-space

ignore-space-at-eol

Treats lines with the indicated type of whitespace change as
unchanged for the sake of a three-way merge. Whitespace
changes mixed with other changes to a line are not ignored.
See also git-diff[1]-b, -w, and
--ignore-space-at-eol.

If their version only introduces whitespace changes to a line,
our version is used;

If our version introduces whitespace changes but their
version includes a substantial change, their version is used;

Otherwise, the merge proceeds in the usual way.

renormalize

This runs a virtual check-out and check-in of all three stages
of a file when resolving a three-way merge. This option is
meant to be used when merging branches with different clean
filters or end-of-line normalization rules. See "Merging
branches with differing checkin/checkout attributes" in
gitattributes[5] for details.

no-renormalize

Disables the renormalize option. This overrides the
merge.renormalize configuration variable.

Turn on rename detection, optionally setting the similarity
threshold. This is the default.
See also git-diff[1]--find-renames.

rename-threshold=<n>

Deprecated synonym for find-renames=<n>.

subtree[=<path>]

This option is a more advanced form of subtree strategy, where
the strategy makes a guess on how two trees must be shifted to
match with each other when merging. Instead, the specified path
is prefixed (or stripped from the beginning) to make the shape of
two trees to match.

octopus

This resolves cases with more than two heads, but refuses to do
a complex merge that needs manual resolution. It is
primarily meant to be used for bundling topic branch
heads together. This is the default merge strategy when
pulling or merging more than one branch.

ours

This resolves any number of heads, but the resulting tree of the
merge is always that of the current branch head, effectively
ignoring all changes from all other branches. It is meant to
be used to supersede old development history of side
branches. Note that this is different from the -Xours option to
the recursive merge strategy.

subtree

This is a modified recursive strategy. When merging trees A and
B, if B corresponds to a subtree of A, B is first adjusted to
match the tree structure of A, instead of reading the trees at
the same level. This adjustment is also done to the common
ancestor tree.

With the strategies that use 3-way merge (including the default, recursive),
if a change is made on both branches, but later reverted on one of the
branches, that change will be present in the merged result; some people find
this behavior confusing. It occurs because only the heads and the merge base
are considered when performing a merge, not the individual commits. The merge
algorithm therefore considers the reverted change as no change at all, and
substitutes the changed version instead.

DEFAULT BEHAVIOUR

Often people use git pull without giving any parameter.
Traditionally, this has been equivalent to saying git pull
origin. However, when configuration branch.<name>.remote is
present while on branch <name>, that value is used instead of
origin.

In order to determine what URL to use to fetch from, the value
of the configuration remote.<origin>.url is consulted
and if there is not any such variable, the value on the URL: line
in $GIT_DIR/remotes/<origin> is used.

In order to determine what remote branches to fetch (and
optionally store in the remote-tracking branches) when the command is
run without any refspec parameters on the command line, values
of the configuration variable remote.<origin>.fetch are
consulted, and if there aren’t any, $GIT_DIR/remotes/<origin>
is consulted and its Pull: lines are used.
In addition to the refspec formats described in the OPTIONS
section, you can have a globbing refspec that looks like this:

refs/heads/*:refs/remotes/origin/*

A globbing refspec must have a non-empty RHS (i.e. must store
what were fetched in remote-tracking branches), and its LHS and RHS
must end with /*. The above specifies that all remote
branches are tracked using remote-tracking branches in
refs/remotes/origin/ hierarchy under the same name.

The rule to determine which remote branch to merge after
fetching is a bit involved, in order not to break backward
compatibility.

If explicit refspecs were given on the command
line of git pull, they are all merged.

When no refspec was given on the command line, then git pull
uses the refspec from the configuration or
$GIT_DIR/remotes/<origin>. In such cases, the following
rules apply:

If branch.<name>.merge configuration for the current
branch <name> exists, that is the name of the branch at the
remote site that is merged.

If the refspec is a globbing one, nothing is merged.

Otherwise the remote branch of the first refspec is merged.

EXAMPLES

Update the remote-tracking branches for the repository
you cloned from, then merge one of them into your
current branch:

$ git pull
$ git pull origin

Normally the branch merged in is the HEAD of the remote repository,
but the choice is determined by the branch.<name>.remote and
branch.<name>.merge options; see git-config[1] for details.

Merge into the current branch the remote branch next:

$ git pull origin next

This leaves a copy of next temporarily in FETCH_HEAD, but
does not update any remote-tracking branches. Using remote-tracking
branches, the same can be done by invoking fetch and merge:

$ git fetch origin
$ git merge origin/next

If you tried a pull which resulted in complex conflicts and
would want to start over, you can recover with git reset.

SECURITY

The fetch and push protocols are not designed to prevent one side from
stealing data from the other repository that was not intended to be
shared. If you have private data that you need to protect from a malicious
peer, your best option is to store it in another repository. This applies
to both clients and servers. In particular, namespaces on a server are not
effective for read access control; you should only grant read access to a
namespace to clients that you would trust with read access to the entire
repository.

The known attack vectors are as follows:

The victim sends "have" lines advertising the IDs of objects it has that
are not explicitly intended to be shared but can be used to optimize the
transfer if the peer also has them. The attacker chooses an object ID X
to steal and sends a ref to X, but isn’t required to send the content of
X because the victim already has it. Now the victim believes that the
attacker has X, and it sends the content of X back to the attacker
later. (This attack is most straightforward for a client to perform on a
server, by creating a ref to X in the namespace the client has access
to and then fetching it. The most likely way for a server to perform it
on a client is to "merge" X into a public branch and hope that the user
does additional work on this branch and pushes it back to the server
without noticing the merge.)

As in #1, the attacker chooses an object ID X to steal. The victim sends
an object Y that the attacker already has, and the attacker falsely
claims to have X and not Y, so the victim sends Y as a delta against X.
The delta reveals regions of X that are similar to Y to the attacker.

BUGS

Using --recurse-submodules can only fetch new commits in already checked
out submodules right now. When e.g. upstream added a new submodule in the
just fetched commits of the superproject the submodule itself can not be
fetched, making it impossible to check out that submodule later without
having to do a fetch again. This is expected to be fixed in a future Git
version.